Mortal Pongbat is Pong, taken to a whole new level of vicious, friend-losing fun.
It runs in 256 colors (automatically changed for your convenience) on any 68020 (or better) Mac running system 7.1 or later, with 1MB (actually it only requires about 700k) of free RAM.
There should be two copies available on this archive, the 68k version for 68000-based Macs and a PPC version for PowerPC Macs.
Why is it?
You might be wondering why anyone would come out with yet another version of Pong?
Well, I'll answer that...
This one is really fun.
That's not me talking, that's the dozens of students at Carnegie Mellon University who have played it, as well as many people I have given it to, talking.
Take original, plain vanilla Pong, add the following features, shake vigorously and you get Mortal Pongbat:
1. Really cool graphics and effects
2. Neato nifty sounds
3. A beam weapon to burn holes in the other guy's paddle
4. Autonomous Mines bouncing around the field endangering your very existence as a player
5. Multiple brightly colored pucks
6. Pods that block and bounce the pucks, and contain prizes for you to get
8. Two person play, as well as person vs. computer play.
How much?
Mortal Pongbat is shareware.
This simply means that if you like it and play it with friends, family, pets or household appliances, you should probably go to the trouble of sending me a friendly letter and a check for $20, or anything you feel like sending.
If you hate it, throw it away, wash your hands, and write me to tell me why.
Changes:
1.4.1:
Paddle bounce bug fixed.
Option to change to good old-fashioned copybits mode for the graphics added.
Some small bugs fixed.
1.4.0:
Rewrote the graphics code for more speed, and got it! The game is now about 5 times as responsive.
A couple new sounds.
Tie games are now called tie games.
Better, smoother transitions and nicer graphics (new swirlies are nice, yes?)
1.3.3:
Added better sound control.
Added better collision checking.
Fixed bug that allowed un-pause to work even if a game wasn't paused.
1.3.2:
Added mouse control option.
Made intro skippable (click mouse to skip it).
Added new graphics modes for faster play on older machines.
1.3.1:
Pongalities changed to green color, to help protect against confusion with a red goal.
The little gross interface quirks that were reported to me have been sacked.
Errors are now studiously reported to you and not hidden from sight behind the black curtain of...oh forget it - the error messages show up now, OK?!
Possible future additions:
1. AppleTalk network play!
2. New pod types...secret...shhhh.
Vote on these when you email me telling me how much you love the game, how it saved your marriage, and that you're going to name your first born after me - or don't.
Anything Else?
Just so you know, I now recommend almost any machine made in the past 5 years to play this game.
Also, here's my address at CMU:
David Hirschfield
Carnegie Mellon University
SMC 1350
PO BOX 2888
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2888
email: dch+@andrew.cmu.edu
Here's the address you should send your check to:
David Hirschfield
67 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10024
email: cddch@paleo.giss.nasa.gov
Send bug reports to the first address.
Registering Mortal Pongbat will get you my undying admiration, free updates, a place to stay in Pittsburgh, and my next game free.
